


I Always Thought You Were One Of A Kind...

by AlreadyPainfullyGone



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: AU, F/M, M/M, Xmen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-06
Updated: 2014-10-12
Packaged: 2018-02-16 09:23:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 10
Words: 17,839
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2264403
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlreadyPainfullyGone/pseuds/AlreadyPainfullyGone
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The second of my Xmen AUs, following on from the adventures of X1, comes X2. While Derek struggles to find out about his past (and steer clear of Stiles for both their sakes) something is brewing that will endanger all their lives, and force them to form unlikely allegiances, as even Deaton's school proves vulnerable.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So, I've been criticized for my first AU of Xmen being too much 'by the book' or film, to which I say, X1 was awesome, and I only changed small parts here and there because it all fit so perfectly. 
> 
> With the second story, I am taking it in a different direction to the film, though some of my favourite parts will make the cut. While the first two or so chapters mostly coincide with the events of the film, I'm planning some things that are off script, mostly because, though the first film lent itself to Derek and Stiles, the second one needs some more altering and a bit more free reign.
> 
> Read and review :) many thanks.

Derek walked along the shores of Wolf Lake, looking at the rocks and the pebbled edge of the grey water, spotted with snow. Ahead, the enormous concrete and steel dam was capped with snow, the tangles of barbed wire and heaps of rubble between him and it almost hidden in the white of it. The scents dampened, the air cold and clear.

He had looked everywhere, and had found the wide dark mouth of the spillway that made him feel sick with half remembered fear. The spillway. The tunnel. He remembered running down it, in the dark and the wet, smelling blood – his own and others, and chemicals.

That snatch of memory and the name of the place – Wolf Lake. The image of green eyes and blonde hair and that smile. They were all that Deaton had given him, and they had brought him here, where there was nothing.

Wrapped against the cold, and not well, in his leather jacket and gloves, he tramped through the snow back to the motorbike he’d stolen from Jackson.

There was nothing here, nothing for him anyway.

As he started the engine, Derek turned away from the dam, unable to see, or even sense the green eyes watching him through a pair of military grade binoculars.

*

He stopped at a bar in the nearest town, fifty miles away. It was only two streets that crossed in the centre, a bar, a store and a Laundromat in the middle of a rough, struggling circle of prefabricated concrete houses.

He got a beer and sat at the bar, eating stale peanuts and rubbing his hands to get the circulation going.

“You have anything else to eat?” he asked the bartended, a guy in a stained plaid shirt with a straggling beard. He took a packet from a hanging cardboard strip and dropped it on the bar next to Derek’s glass.

“One-fifty.”

Jerky. Derek opened the packet and ripped off a chuck to chew. He remembered, another bar, a year ago, snow on the ground and his truck eating up the miles like a demon, the kid in the seat next to him wolfing down jerky like he hadn’t eaten in days.

He wondered, not for the first time, what Stiles was doing, and how he was. Still at Deaton’s school, learning about his power? Had he found a way to control it? Was he home with his Dad in whatever town he’d come from? Derek hoped he was alright, and happy with Scott and his Dad. After everything he’d gone through he deserved that much.

The TV over the bar changed from a fishing show to the news. The Whitehouse and then a shot of the vice president at a podium in front of the press.

“This attack, though it failed, only highlights the dangers of the mutant population, it one of them can simply walk into the oval office and attack the president himself, what are they doing in our schools, and in our places of business?”

Blurry camera images of a blue creature dissolving into smoke were shown next, grainy and almost completely out of focus.

“Mutants,” said the bar tender, “seems that’s all anyone wants to talk about these days.”

Derek made noncommittal noise. The images on screen had changed to those of a protest in Washington, hundreds of people had taken to the streets with banners and signs calling for the registration of all mutants.

Maybe it was time he went back and checked on Stiles at Deaton’s, just to make sure it was still as safe a haven as he’d left it.

*

He pulled the bike up on the gravel drive just by the front door. If anything the place looked safer than the last time he’d been there, untouchable. The lawns were manicured, the fountain trickling into a pond, and the box hedges were trimmed and sharp edged. From somewhere beyond the house itself, Derek could hear kids calling to one another.

The door opened and Lydia smiled at him. “The professor said you were coming.”

“That why the gates are open?”

“He wanted you to feel welcome.”

“Hey, asshole!” Jackson called, stalking across the lobby.

“He succeeded,” Derek said, he threw the keys to Jackson, “your bike needs gas.”

A group of kids ran through the lobby, on their way to class most likely. One girl tripped on a rug and fell, phasing through a table and scrabbling to her feet.

“Watch out Kira,” Lydia said, “less haste, more speed.”

Kira grinned shyly and ran through the wall to her class.

“Derek?”

Derek looked up. Frozen halfway down the central staircase was Stiles, older than he remembered, the awkward coltishness mostly grown out of him. The white streak that Deucalion’s machine had caused still showed in his hair, and he was wearing a dark red hoodie and black jeans that made him look paler than ever, not to mention his habitual black gloves.

“Hey.”

Stiles came down the rest of the stairs. “You don’t call, you don’t write...not exactly winning gold in the best friend Olympics are you?” He reached Derek and gave him a quick, rough hug. “Glad you’re OK.”

“You look OK too.”

“Well, matter of fact I am,” Stiles stepped back and grinned, “acing all my classes, and I’m doing advanced chemistry.”

“You’re still flunking gym,” Jackson muttered.

“Look at me, of course I’m flunking gym,” he rolled his eyes, “you want to come to the kitchen and grab a beer? I will be drinking soda because I’m a minor who lives with two psychics.”

Derek had wanted to see the professor right away, to discuss Wolf Lake and try to find out something else, anything else about his past. But catching up with Stiles was a tempting alternative, even though it wouldn’t do to get too close. He’d be leaving again soon.

“Sure,” he looked at Lydia, “I’ll go see Deaton later, could you let him-”

“He already knows,” Lydia said, “Jackson, let’s move your bike back to the garage.”

“If there’s even one scratch on it-”

“Then you will do nothing because Derek could break you in half.”

Stiles led Derek off to the kitchen, which was clean and large and deserted. He opened the fridge and took out a beer and a can of soda, then peered at a foil covered tray.

“We’ve got questionable chicken wings if you want, they’ve got us doing some home ec. Type stuff, to get us ready to live on our own. Some kids never learnt this stuff from their parents. Not me though, Dad couldn’t peel an onion to save his life.”

“Have you seen much of him?”

“Oh, he’s up every weekend. Still got his job back home though, but I’ve gone back there for a few weeks now and then. Whole place is pretty much the same.” He opened his soda and set it on the counter. “What about you, where’ve you been?”

“Around. Deaton, he, uh...he put me on the trail of something, something from my past. But it was a dead end.”

“I’m sorry.”

Derek shrugged. “I’ll get there eventually. There has to be some clue about where I was, where I came from.”

“I hope he can help you find it.”

Derek twisted the cap from the beer and looked around the kitchen. “Scott not around?”

“He’s off somewhere with Alison,” Stiles shrugged as if it meant nothing that his only friend was somewhere else, but Derek could see he was upset, “ever since Liberty Island she’s been here, she knows she has family somewhere but, no one’s been able to get hold of them, and they haven’t come looking.”

“Must be tough.”

“Mmm, I guess she misses her dad.”

“I meant for you.”

Stiles shrugged again. “Hey, Scott’s a guy, I know how it is. I mean, if I was normal I’d probably be obsessing over someone too.”

“Still no change?”

“I don’t think there ever will be,” Stiles looked at his hands, “if anything I can feel it getting stronger. Like the less I use it the more it wants to be used,” he swallowed, “Dad doesn’t say anything but I know it scares him.”

Derek reached over and touched the leather of the gloves. “I’m sorry, for leaving like that.”

“You had stuff to do. Besides, I guess there was nothing to keep you here.”

“I’ll be staying a few days.”

“Don’t sweat it.”

“Stiles,” Derek said firmly, “if you ever need anything, or if anything happens, you just have to call, and I’ll be there. I left a cell number with the professor for you, in case you needed me.”

“There wasn’t an emergency or anything. I didn’t think you’d want me bothering you. I mean, who needs some dumb kid calling them every five seconds just to talk about how much it sucks that his best friend has a girlfriend, and he doesn’t have anyone because he kills everything he touches?”

“Hey, if that dumb kid saved my life? I’d want to hear from him,” Derek watched Stiles’ face, hearing his heart beat faster, “besides, you touched me and I’m still here.”

“Just barely.”

“But still here.”

“Yeah.”

Stiles was just looking at him, and Derek was sure he saw it this time, a certain flicker in his eyes, like the start of something softening. It was a dangerous look, there were a whole list of reasons, not the least of which were Stiles’ age and abilities, that meant that was not a good sign.

Derek cleared his throat and downed the better part of his beer. “I should go and see Deaton.”

“Alright...guess I’ll see you at dinner?”

“Yeah, probably.”

Stiles got up, pausing before he reached the door. “You’ll say bye right? If you have to leave again?”

“I’ll come find you before I go.”

Stiles nodded and turned back to the door. Derek listened to the pad of his sneakers on the floor, going up the stairs.

He’d known that Stiles cared about him, in some small way. Derek cared about him too, that was why he’d gone to Liberty Island to save him, and why he’d left him with Deaton where he’d be safe. But it could never be more than that, Derek was older, and not the kind of whole, available person that Stiles was. He couldn’t get involved in whatever the kid’s feelings were, it would only end badly.


	2. Chapter 2

Stiles closed his bedroom door and leant against it.

“Smooth. Completely, didn’t act like a total moon eyed idiot at all.”

He threw himself down on his bed and groaned into his pillow. He was such an idiot. Ever since Derek left he’d been thinking about the day he came back. He’d sworn that the next time he saw Derek he’d be more articulate, not just some dumb kid who needed rescuing, but a mutant prepared to stand up for himself against the world. He’d be able to talk to Derek about important stuff, not just babble like a nervous pre-teen with a crush.

(He’d also kind of fantasised about being ripped, but that was a whole other scenario, involving a bed, or just a desk, and less clothes, and the ability to touch another person without killing them stone dead.)

Ugh. If he’d been frustrated before meeting Derek, he was now always about ten seconds from bursting into flames. Now that Scott had Alison, and a far off look on his stupidly happy face that practically screamed ‘having sex regularly with my girlfriend’, not to mention the freak weather that had started to hit the school and nowhere else for periods of twenty or so minutes every so often – it was all Stiles could do not to claw his skin off in desperation.

He remembered what it was like to kiss someone, up close with their mouth on yours, slightly damp lips and warm breath and the hitch in your throat, getting wetter as your mouths slid together, bodies touching, friction...

He’d been looking at Derek’s lips, he knew that.

Fuck he was such a moron. Derek was an honest to God adult, a mutant who had seen more than his fair share of shit – you didn’t have to be psychic to see that. And it was so obvious that he saw him as a kid barely aware of any of the real world dangers that faced them. Which wasn’t true – Stiles had been on the run for over a year, he’d seen some seriously fucked up stuff, like the time he lived for a while in an abandoned gas station with a pyrokinetic and a dude with wings – and the cops had come and raided the place and shot right through one of those strong, white wings, blasting blood and feathers everywhere.

That was the first time he’d had to use his power on someone in order to survive, he’d scanned the papers afterwards and seen that, though the cop had survived, he was in a permanent coma.

He wasn’t a baby, and he wasn’t stupid. But he knew that, compared to Derek, he hadn’t faintest idea of what the world was like, and how terrible is could be. Didn’t change the fact that he wanted to know, he wanted Derek to talk to him like an equal.

Derek wasn’t at dinner, but neither was the professor, so Stiles figured that they were still talking. He was still worried that Derek had ditched him again, but he had his word that wouldn’t happen, and he trusted him, mostly.

Derek wasn’t in the common area after dinner either, and neither was Scott, because Alison was visiting. All through dinner they’d been making sappy faces at each other, and Stiles had barely managed to exchange two words with his friend before he got the impression that Scott wasn’t listening.  He knew Scott didn’t mean to be dismissive, but it still hurt, though Stiles was happy he had someone.

In the end he went to bed early and studied. A total lack of friend-time was really helping his grades at least. When he next looked up from his chemistry textbook it was two a.m. and he wasn’t in the least bit tired.

Fortunately, in a building full of mutants, everyone had their quirks, he knew he wasn’t  the only one wide awake. There was a kid who literally never slept, the only kid with better grades than Stiles, even though he was five years younger.

In his pyjama pants he padded down the corridor and downstairs to the TV room. Sure enough there was someone sitting on the couch, watching the stream of infomercial crap that came up on the TV late at night, only it wasn’t the kid he’d been expecting.

“Derek?”

Derek turned his head, the glow from the TV catching the side of his face, making it look grimmer than usual.

“What’re you doing up?” He said.

“Can’t sleep,” Stiles rounded the end of the couch and sat down, conscious that he wasn’t wearing a shirt and that the last person he wanted to see his lack of abs was the guy sitting next to him. “Where’s Jamie?”

“He went to get milk.”

“Oh,” he looked at the screen, where a red faced man was excitedly demonstrating the virtues of a new kind of waffle iron. “What’d the professor want to talk to you about, you were gone a while.”

“Mostly about the president, and the mutant that tried to kill him.”

“I saw that on the news.”

“He thinks he can track the mutant, Deaton, Jackson and Lydia are going tonight. Probably already left.”

“Free house, nice. Want to get me a beer?”

“They left me in charge.”

“No corrupting the minors then.” Stiles could have bitten his tongue out, why was he such an idiot? Derek looked uncomfortable, transferred his attention back to the screen.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean-”

Derek stood up, twisting around to look at the front door.

“What is it?” Stiles got to his feet, looking around in the half light of the television.

“There’s people outside,” he listened carefully, “they’re loading guns. Run upstairs and get the others somewhere safe.”

“What about you?”

“You wake everyone up, I’ll-”

There was a crash from the kitchen, a yell cut off sharply, a glass bottle hitting the floor, followed by the thud of a body.

The front door abruptly exploded inwards, and four guys wearing the kind of stuff Stiles had only seen in black ops games came through in formation, carrying large guns with green lazer sights that rippled over the walls, then caught on him and Derek.

Stiles dove for the stairs, just as Derek stepped in front of him as cover. Projectiles whipped through the air, and Stiles had barely scrambled out of the way before a large dart hit the banister where he’d been.

He ran up the stairs, pausing only to turn and look back at Derek, who had his claws buried in one man’s chest, using him as a shield to catch the darts that the other three were firing at him.

His bare feet pounded the corridor and he thumped on doors one after the other, as he reached Scott’s room the window at the end of the corridor shattered and two more black ops guys rappelled into the house. He threw open Scott’s door and shut it behind him, grabbing the dresser and shoving it hard to get it in front of the door.

A light clicked on.

“Stiles? What the hell?” Scott muttered sleepily.

“Get up, there’s people attacking the house.”

There was a scream in the corridor, a young girl, the thud of a body and the thunder of running feet. The whizzing of darts, more thuds. Scott leapt out of bed (thankfully wearing pyjama pants) and Alison ran to the door in her nightdress and put her eye to the peephole.

She turned to look at them. “There’s three men out there, Leena, Al and Merrick are on the floor – I don’t if they’re-”

The door rattled and Alison leapt away from it.

The wood crunched and protested as it was battered from the outside, the dresser started to move across the floor.

“Get behind me,” Alison said, probably just to Scott, but hey, Stiles didn’t have anything to protect himself with either, so he too stepped behind her.

The dresser tipped over and the door opened, just as the green lazer sights found them, Alison held up a hand and the room lit up as brightly as a midsummer day. The intruders, all wearing night-vision goggles, yelled and fell to the floor, trying to cover their eyes. Scott raised a hand and in moment all three of them were trapped by a layer of ice.

“We have to get the kids,” Scott said, already picking his way through the frozen commandos and into the hallway. Alison followed and Stiles, with his lack of active powers in mind, grabbed Scott’s signed baseball bat from the wall and followed after them.

All the bedroom doors were open. Some of the kids had made it to the hallway, others had been darted in their rooms. A quick check of one or two quietened his fears that they’d been poisoned – they were all only unconscious.

At the top of the stairs they all froze, looking down at the four dead commandos and the spreading pools of blood.

“Derek was here when I left him,” Stiles said, “maybe he went to the kitchen? Jamie was in there when they got him.”

“Stay low,” Alison advised, and they crept down the stairs together, avoiding the corpses and heading for the long corridor to the kitchen and common room. Rounding a bend in the corridor they saw a ground of four students – Kira, Ethan and Aiden, with Danny leading them towards them. (Technically as Ethan and Aiden had combined into their ‘hulk’ form, they should have only counted as one, but it tended to annoy them if anyone made that rationalisation).

“Hey,” Danny had clearly been having some trouble with his mutation, much like Stiles he didn’t have complete control over it yet, and the stress of the attack was clearly having an effect, his skin had sprouted blue hair, and his hands and bare feet were large and misshapen, half human, half animal. “Who the hell are these guys?”

“Don’t know,” Stiles said, “have you seen Derek?”

Danny shook his head. Kira looked terrified, but she was holding together well, carrying a hockey stick with her. Stiles held up his bat in a salute.

“They’ve drugged all the kids upstairs, I guess they’re going to take them somewhere,” Alison said, “we have to stop them from coming back.”

“How do you think we should-”

The net came out of nowhere, engulfing Danny and Aidan/Ethan, Kira phased through it and ran straight at Scott and Alison, tackling them and phasing through the wall behind them. Stiles knew she couldn’t take him, because of the old ‘physical contact’ problem. As he turned and ran back down the corridor he heard the sounds of the commandos tazing Danny and the twins unconscious.

He reached the kitchen, where Alison, Kira and Scott were huddled away from the windows.

“We can’t stop them,” Scott said, once they’d all gotten over their kneejerk reaction to Stiles bursting through the door. “There’s no way we can save the others, not when we don’t know how many of those guys are outside.”

“There’s an escape tunnel in the wall,” Kira said, “I’ve seen it. But the only door to it is upstairs in the dorm corridor. I mean, I could take you two through the wall but...”

“Yeah, I’m a dead weight, I know,” Stiles said, “you guys go now, I’ll get back upstairs and get as many kids as I can through the door, you can carry them down to...where does the tunnel come out?”

“It goes down through the walls, comes out in the garage.”

“We’re not letting you go alone,” Scott said, “I’ll come with you, Kira and Alison can get into the tunnel and wait for us to start moving the kids.”

Stiles had to bite his tongue to stop himself from asking ‘what about Derek?’ – wherever Derek was he could take care of himself. The pre-teen students upstairs were helpless.

He and Scott left the kitchen, looking up and down the corridor. Danny and the twins were gone, as where the men who’d netted them. They shared a look and crept back to the stairs, climbing them as quickly as possible. In the door corridor, Stiles knelt and started tapping wood panels, looking for a hollow one, while Scott started to bring the unconscious kids out of their rooms and into the hall, ready to take down the tunnel.

“Hey,” Stiles hissed, “can you grab my gloves? They’re in my room.”

Scott nodded and started for Stiles’ room, they both heard the noise of someone coming along the corridor at the same time, and Stiles froze before throwing himself down on the floor as if he was already unconscious. He heard Scott do the same.

“Get up,” Derek said, and when Stiles looked up at him he saw that he was gloved to the elbows in blood, with more of it on his face and clothes.

The two of them got up.

“Are there any others they didn’t get?” Derek asked.

“Kira and Alison, they’re in the escape shaft waiting for us to start taking kids down. It comes out in the garage downstairs, we can get away in a car.” Scott said.

Derek nodded, then knelt by one of the panels and used his claws to remove the wooden cover, exposing a gleaming metal door with a handle in the centre. He cranked it open and looked into the hole beyond.

“It’s a ladder, you know how to get down one of those with someone on your back?”

Scott nodded, though Stiles knew for a fact that he had about as much idea of how to fireman’s carry someone as he did about being a marsupial.

Derek inhaled suddenly, and frowned.

“Derek?” Stiles and someone else said simultaneously.

The voice of a stranger made all three of them turn sharply. At the end of the corridor stood an old man with white hair, dressed in a black military uniform, but unarmed. The six men behind him however, were all pointing guns at them.

“My God, look at you,” he smiled, but it was a smile with no warmth, like a shark opening its mouth to clamp down on a baby seal. “You haven’t aged a day.”

“Go,” Derek said softly, standing up and taking a step towards the man.

“You were always the thing I was most proud of – seeing what you’ve done here, to my men...you’re a work of art.”

Scott cast a helpless look at the kids on the floor.

“I know you don’t remember me, how could you?” the man said, and Stiles was scared by the look on Derek’s face, like he was in a trance. “But maybe...some part of you can remember my voice? I used to talk to you all the time while we were working on you. There were times that you felt, almost like a son to me.” He smiled, “and Kate, why, you have to remember her surely, on some level?”

For one second, Stiles saw something he never wanted to see again – fear in Derek’s eyes, then frost ran over the wall beside them, and within moment a wall of ice over a foot thick had formed between Derek and the commandos.

“Derek, please, come on,” Stiles called, as Scott tore his hand from the icy wall and started to climb down.

“I’ll be fine,” Derek said, still looking at the wall, and the shadow of the man on the other side.

“But we won’t,” Stiles said.

Derek turned then, and Stiles looked at him, standing up and holding out a hand to wave him closer, urgently (Scott’s ice had a habit of collapsing unexpectedly – which had almost ruined Christmas that year, indoor avalanches were so not fun).

Derek came towards him, and Stiles waited for him to climb into the hatch before he slid in and pulled the door closed behind him.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The dub-con aspects of the story won't get stronger than this. I just wanted to be sure I offered fair warning. It's more of a warning than a denial though, so be reassured.

Derek turned the heat on in the car, but still Stiles shivered beside him. He was after all only wearing pyjama pants, and the night was freezing.

 In the back seat, Alison and Scott shared a blanket that had been folded and stowed there. They were a comfortable distance from Deaton’s, they’d eaten up the road fast as Derek broke every speed limit in getting away from the black hummers and trucks that had been scattered on the gravel drive. No one had known about the concealed entrance to the garage, a new addition that Scott had told him about as they’d climbed into the car.

At the next red light, Derek actually stopped and shrugged off his jacket, reaching over to put it around Stiles’ shoulders, careful not to touch him. Stiles pulled it around himself and slid his arms into the sleeves.

“Thanks.”

It was the first word any of them had spoken.

“Where do you think they’ve taking them?” Alison asked in a small voice.

Kira, squashed in beside Alison in her black fluffy robe, rested her forehead on the glass and said nothing.

“I don’t know,” Derek said, “but we’re going to find them. After we find Deaton.”

“We don’t have clothes,” Scott pointed out.

“Then we’ll stop on the way to where Lydia said they were heading, at a...Wal-Mart or something,” Derek said.

“We can’t go in to a Wal-Mart to buy clothes, while wearing pyjamas,” Stiles said, “they’ll call the cops because 1. Clothes are kind of important to the public good, and 2. It looks kind of like you’ve kidnapped us.”

Derek sighed. He should have thought of that.

“We can stop at mine,” Scott said suddenly, “we should pass it on the way, in the morning. My Mom will be at work, we can raid the house and...I’ll leave a note or something.”

“Dear Mom, I’m totally a mutant and not on a lacrosse scholarship to an elite boarding school. By the way my new girlfriend is wearing your underwear. Peace out, Scott,” Stiles said.

As no one could come up with a better plan, Derek told Scott to start giving him directions when they came close to where he lived.

It was an attractive house. They reached it as the sun was coming up, bathing the outside of it, the white walls and the generous porch covered in climbing flowers, in a golden light.

“Are you sure you want us to go in there?” Derek asked, “You’re bringing this right to the door with you, you know that right?”

Scott looked worried for a moment, then nodded, even though the frown didn’t quite leave his face. “She’d want to help. If I could tell her any of this, she’d help us.”

“Alright,” Derek climbed out of the car and slammed the door, waiting for the kids to get out and follow him across the street in a pyjama clad huddle. They looked like they’d been evacuated from sleepover camp.

Scott scrambled up on a planter and took the spare key from above the door. Inside, the house was clean and silent, and Derek can’t smell anyone other than a woman who must be Scott’s mother, and faint traces of Scott himself.

“There’s clothes and stuff in my room,” Scott said, looking around as though he’d never seen the place before. Derek guessed that he hadn’t been back much since going to Deaton’s. “Derek, you want to take first shower?”

Derek looked down at himself, at the trails and spatters of blood that were dried onto his skin and clothes.

“Yeah. Probably a good idea.”

“I’ll get some clothes, some of my Dad’s old stuff should still be here,” Scott disappeared upstairs, and Derek followed slowly, he turned and looked down at Stiles, who was standing with Alison and Kira in the hall. “Stay away from the windows, get something to eat.”

The bathroom is clean but old, and Derek strips off and climbs into the tub, letting the dribble of warm water from the shower slowly sluice the blood and dirt off. He rubs his hands over his face.

Stuttering to life behind his eyes come the images of the wet, dark, tunnel. The sounds of gunfire and that face...the face of that man distorted by water as he looked up at it.

It’s like a punch to the gut. That name was inside him all this time and only now is it available to him. The tone of that man’s voice, the way he selected and used his words, it was all familiar.

 Kate. That’s what he’d said. That Derek should remember her.

Kate. With the green eyes.

The water’s gone cold by the time he steps out of the shower, whoever goes next is going to have to wait. He wraps a pink towel around his waist and goes across the hall to the room where Scott has laid out jeans and a black t-shirt that his Dad left behind.

He’s not expecting to find Stiles there, getting changed in front of the drawn curtains. He’s just fumbling the buttons on an unfamiliar fly, no shirt and no socks, hair flat and dripping from where he’d obviously just dunked it in the sink. He looks somehow older and younger at the same time, something about the lines of his chest in the dim light, the paleness of his bare feet on the carpet.

He starts when he sees Derek. “God, predator much? I thought you mostly stuck to jungle environments.” Derek could hear his heart jumping rabbit-quick. Stiles grabbed a shirt and held it in a bundle. “You were, uh, gone a while. I couldn’t wait to wash all that tunnel crap off.”

The sound of his heart thundering, the smell of hormones turning the air heavy, has Derek watching Stiles with the focus he usually only feels when he’s about to throw himself claws first on someone.

Stiles seems to sense the change, he stills, all the usual ticks and gestures that accompany him so much as breathing stop for a moment. The scent of him, of chaotic want and anxiety and bitter loss swells and Derek takes a step forwards, he’s been through too much in the last 24hours to use his higher brain.

“Derek,” his name catches breathlessly in Stiles’ mouth, “you’re kind of looking at me like...well, like I think about you looking at me sometimes and, I don’t know why I’m telling you that but, it’s hard to shut up when you’re looking at me...”

“How am I looking at you?” He enjoys the way Stiles’ pulse leaps at that.

“Kind of like you want to jump me. Which is...good, that’s a good look. But it, uh, can’t happen, you remember that, right? Because it looks a little like you don’t.

He comes closer, reaching Stiles as the kid blinks once, as if regaining some of his senses, takes a step backwards.

“I’ll kill you,” Stiles says softly. It’s not a threat, just a dully spoken reality, “you know that. And, fuck do I know that. I’m...this is so not fair, and you smell really good, if kinda girly, did you use Scott’s Mom’s shampoo?”

Derek is close enough for Stiles’ scent to become a taste. This animal nature, was it is, or was it something they gave him? It feels like it belongs to him, it feels good and easy, the way killing had, back at the house. He was only protecting himself, and what was his – the most natural thing in the world, and Stiles feels like he belongs to him, has done since he first found him lying in the back of his truck.

“Derek,” Stiles says, as he gets closer still, closing the last few inches, “don’t...”

His lips hit Stiles’, soft and parted and wet.  The sound that Stiles makes, almost smothered  by his own mouth, is nothing but hunger. His body has the slack willingness of prey.

It takes a second to kick in, the prickling rush, like needles scraping over his skin, pushing under and working towards his heart, cold like blades of ice-

Stiles jerks back and Derek stumbles, catches himself with his hand on the wall. He fights to catch his breath, the cold needles of life-sucking power freezing out his desire as quickly as a gale snuffing out a candle.

He turns to see Stiles with his arms around himself, a flush to his skin, his lips parted. He’s looking at the wall to Derek’s right, not meeting his eyes.

“Stiles...”

“It’s fine,” Stiles says, too quickly. “Not your fault I’m...” he shakes his head, grabs his shirt from the bed and ducks out of the room. Derek hears him going along the corridor, his feet tripping quickly down the stairs.

He sits down on the bed, rests he head in his hand. He’d been so careful, trying to steer clear of what now seemed inevitable. Stiles had come into his life, and it had felt, from the start, as though the two of them existed separately to Deaton and the others. They were their own pack – and Derek had something in him that needed that feeling. The solidness of family, the warmth of affection.

That’s what he wanted to share with Stiles, and that’s why he’d left him behind, knowing that it couldn’t happen. Ever.

 Only now they were stuck together again, and he’d done what he’d promised himself he wouldn’t do – he’d tried to touch him, and in the process, made him feel like a monster.

He pulled on the old clothes and dumped the towel in the hamper by the door.

He knew what he had to do.

 

 

 


	4. Chapter 4

They’re all in the kitchen when Derek decides to drop the bomb on them.

“Are you freaking kidding me?” Stiles jerks his arm away from Scott, who’s trying to get him to sit back down. But he’s up and he’s going to stay up, glaring across the counter at Derek, who’s coolly sipping a beer like nothing is happening. “You’re going to leave us, here?”

“It’s safe here.”

“Like hell it is! Derek, the whole country wants our heads on sticks, our friends are being transported god knows where by Evil Father Time, and the professor is across the country. We are safe, with you.” He’s aware that everyone is looking at him, apart from Derek, who is looking at some point in the distance, behind him. “And you are safer with us. Scott and I both saw you go all sleeper-agent when that guy started talking to you. What’s going to happen if you come up against him again? We could help.”

“You’re a kid, how the hell can you help?”

The silence in the kitchen actually rings, and for a split second Stiles actually hates him.

That’s what it comes down to, every time. He’s a kid, so he has to stay at the school, he’s a kid, so he’s the one that gets captured by Deucalion, he’s the one that has to go on the run, unable to take care of himself.

“I killed your uncle, when you couldn’t,” he says, “I call that pretty damn helpful.”

“Stiles,” Scott, always trying to keep the peace.

“No, you know what,” Stiles rips the borrowed neoprene gloves off of his hands, “you think I’m just a kid? How about we go outside and see who beats who?”

Scott grabs his arm. “Hey, calm down man.”

Derek is silent, and there’s a vicious, cold little part of Stiles that enjoys the slight darkening of his expression. He’s killed, and if it keeps him up at night, at least he can use it now to keep Derek from storming off alone to face God knows what.

“It seems a bad idea to split up,” Alison says, diplomatically, “we’re stronger together.”

“Scott, you’re Mom, she can’t know we were here right, so, where can we go?” Kira said, turning to Derek, “we won’t be safe crowded into a motel.”

“Derek, you are not leaving here without us,” he says, not taking his eyes off of him, like Derek might disappear if he does.

Derek looks at all of them, and when his eyes settle on Stiles, he can see the fear under the stubbornness. Derek is afraid, though of what he doesn’t know.

“You could die, you know that, right?” Derek says, “if I take you out there, into whatever is going on, you could all die. Scott, your Mom won’t even know you were here, she might not get a chance to bury you. Kira, I know you have parents in California, you’ll never see them again.” His face barely softens when he looks at Alison, but Stiles is sensitive to Derek’s moods, and he can tell there’s pity there for her. “Alison, I know you’re family is gone, but you have Scott, and you could lose him, if I let you all come with me. And Stiles, your Dad-”

“Dont. Talk about my Dad,” Stiles says sharply, “you don’t know the first thing about him, about me and him. If I could tell him about any of this without him getting involved, and hurt, he would want to help.”

“But he wouldn’t want you mixed up in it,” Derek says, “that man at the house, his name is Gerard. That’s all I remember, that, and he had a part in whatever happened to make me lose my memory, whatever gave me the metal on my bones. If I take you with me, and you get caught, they might not kill you right away. They might keep you and learn what they can, however they can.”

Stiles’ stomach feels cold.

“You don’t want that. I don’t want you, any of you,” Derek says, transferring his gaze to the others one by one, before it returns to Stiles, “to go through that.”

“And what about you?” Stiles says. Because it’s all fine and wonderful that Derek doesn’t want them getting hurt, but if Derek’s going to walk right up to this Gerard asshole and try and claw his face off, the odds of him surviving are pretty unfavourable.

“I’ll track down Lydia and Jackson,” Derek says, “I won’t go into a fight I can’t win.”

Stiles knows as well as Derek does, that that is total bullshit. Derek wouldn’t even be thinking about win or lose – only bloodshed, and vengeance, and mutually assured destruction, if that’s what it took.

He looks away from Derek, hating that he’s not powerful enough to stop him leaving. He’s not strong enough to help, or important enough to ask him to stay. And worse, burning under all of it, is the shame of not even being able to kiss him without screwing everything up. He knows that’s why Derek is leaving, because he’s trying to get away from him and his dangerous, stupid power and his idiotic crush.

“Stiles?” Derek is saying, “do you understand?”

“Do whatever the hell you want,” Stiles says, “not like we can stop you.”

Scott sighs. “I think we should be heading out anyway, we can get some takeout and find a motel for the night.”

“We don’t have any money,” Alison points out.

“I have a hundred bucks upstairs in my room,” Scott said, “cash my Dad sent for my birthday, Mom hadn’t got around to sending it.”

“Want some help cleaning up?” Stiles asks, it’ll get him away from Derek at least.

“Sure, I think it’s just the bathroom.”

Everyone tenses at the sound of the door opening.

There’s the sound of footsteps, then silence as they stop and the rattle of a bag and coat being hung on the rack in the hall.

Everyone looks at Scott, then Derek tips his head at the back door and Alison starts creeping towards it, followed by Kira.

The kitchen door opens, and Scott’s Mom, a tall woman in lavender scrubs with a messy pile of black curls on her head freezes in the doorway.

“Scott?”

“Hi Mom,” Scott says lamely.

“What are you doing here, and who...are those girls wearing your clothes?”

Alison and Kira are both wearing hoodies of Scott’s, Alison with jeans, and Kira with a pair of black running shorts.

“Yeah, they’re uh, from school. This is Alison and Kira, and this is Stiles, my best friend.”

Stiles finds himself waving.

Mrs Mcall, stunned, waves back. “And that is..?”

“Derek, he’s a teacher at the school, he’s here with us because...umm...”

Scott is not a natural liar. Stiles however, practically came out of the womb with untruths falling out of his mouth.

“It’s a fieldtrip, we were in town for a field trip and all our stuff is stuck in the trunk of the car. It rained and Scott said we could come back here because you wouldn’t mind and he really wanted us to meet you.”

“That. Exactly,” Scott said.

“A fieldtrip to where?”

Scott looks at Stiles.

“The planetarium.”

“It closed down, three years ago.”

“Yeah it did, you’d think Derek would’ve googled it before driving us across the country but, apparently forward planning is not his strong suit.”

Mrs Mcall turns to Derek. “What exactly do you teach, Mr...?”

“Derek, please,” Derek smiles, and seeing him actually be normal and charming makes Stiles feel like he’s in the twilight zone. Usually Derek grunts at strangers, or just glares. “I teach...home ec.”

“How does that involve the planetarium?”

Stiles glares at Derek from behind her back. His perfectly good lie is being ruined. Figures. The idiots he has to work with sometimes.

“I’m just filling in for their science teacher. He’s out sick, some kind of bug.”

Mrs Mcall is, Stiles can see, far from stupid, and therefore far from convinced. But fortunately the truth is so far from believable that even the thinnest lie has more credibility, and after giving Derek a strange look she starts talking about dinner, and taking pasta out of the cupboard.

While Kira and Alison lapse easily into school-friend chatter, Stiles excuses himself and goes outside to take care of something. As he’s coming back around the house he meets Derek in the shadow of the tree in the side yard.

“For a superpowered amnesiac killing machine, you suck at lying.”

“Or you’re worryingly good at it.”

“Hey, you tell a lot of lies when you’re a runaway. Sure I’m over eighteen. Yeah someone definitely knows where I am. Hey, I have a gun you know. Shit like that.”

“You told someone you had a gun?”

“Easier than explaining I am the gun.”

Derek put his hands into his pockets and looked out across the street at the neat, normal houses opposite.

“If I promised not to try and kiss you again, would you stay?” Stiles said, his courage wadded up tightly in his sweating palms. “Because, I can control myself, easy.”

“The point is you shouldn’t have to. I should be the one to step away. Not because of your, because of what you can do, but because it’s the right thing to do.”

“Oh yeah, the right thing,” Stile shakes his head, “in case you’ve been hit in the head too many times since we met, let me remind you – we’re mutants, we were born into a grey area. Most people think the ‘right thing’ would be to kill us.” He stuffs his hands into his pockets, “and, for the record, as far as ‘right’ goes, if I wasn’t the way I am, we’d still be up in that bedroom, together. Instead of being out here in the cold, talking about you leaving me, again.”

“I’m doing this, for your own good.”

Stiles stepped past him, feeling anger and frustration war in him with loneliness and shame, “That’s the whole problem though, isn’t it? You keep doing things for me. Not doing them with me.”


	5. Chapter 5

Derek sneaks out while the others are sleeping.

Melissa, Scott’s Mom, wouldn’t hear of them leaving after dark and driving all the way back to the school. Scott’s in his old room, Kira and Alison sleeping in his bed, and Scott on the floor. Gentlemanly, Derek knew that about him already.

Stiles took the couch, and Derek, aware that Melissa didn’t know quite what to make of him, said he’d be happy on the floor in the den.

The whole house is dark, but he navigates it easily, lets himself out the back way and unlocks the car. They’ll be fine now they’re with Scott’s Mom. Stiles will think up some lie, and they can stay with her until he can send Lydia, or Jackson, or both, back to get them. Melissa will buy that flakey, obviously not a teacher Derek ran off and left his charges behind.

Not far from the truth, at all.

He turns the key in the ignition, and nothing happens.

Again, he turns the key, and then thumps his head against the steering  wheel.

Back in the house, he paces quickly through the kitchen and into the living room where Stiles is awake, smiling slightly and playing with a spark plug.

“Lose something, you great big liar you?”

He has that cold look, and though there’s humour in his voice, it’s not friendly, or even entirely human.

“Give it back.”

Stiles tosses him the spark plug. “I’ve got more than that.”

Derek wonders just how much Stiles yanked out from under the hood while he was outside.

“Stiles, I have to leave.”

“So leave,” Stiles waves at the door, then stands up and folds his arms. “You can walk out there, right now, get in the car, and wait for me to put back what I took. Then we’ll leave.”

“I’m not taking you with me.”

“You’re not, I’m taking you. Because I’ve got what’ll get the car moving, because I’ve got a power that, if it keeps me from being with you how I want to be, will at least help keep you safe. I can do that.”

For a second they just stared at each other. Derek can feel the pull of pack again, he’s not sure what Stiles is, subordinate or leader, at the moment. Maybe they’re equal.

“Get. In. The Car. Derek.”

“If you’re coming-”

“I am.”

“What about the others? Scott, Kira, Alison – you want them to die too?”

“Everyone they captured at the house could be dead, and every minute you spend arguing with me-”

“Bullshit, this isn’t about them, it’s about you,” Derek said, as loudly as he dared.

Stiles’ eyes dart away, then come back to him, harder than before. “Let me do this. OK? Let me do _something,_ I can’t live like this – being protected from everything, having everything protected _from_ me, OK?”

He takes a step, the another, until they’re almost chest to chest, Stiles looking up at him, just slightly. “You have no idea what it was like after you left. No one gets it, you’re the only one that’s come close. Sometimes I catch them looking at me, like they’re afraid – you know what that’s like. Even Deaton...” his jaw tenses, “even Deaton’s scared of what I might do. And my Dad..I can barely stand going to see him, because he’s scared of me. I scare, my own Dad.”

His eyes are wide, begging his understanding. Derek knows what it’s like, of course, to be dangerous, to be treated as such. But he can’t imagine what it’s like to be Stiles, trapped in his own skin without touch, without connection, feeling everyone draw back from him, day by day.

“You left me,” Stiles says, a hot flame of embarrassment licking up his throat as his voice cracks, “I thought...I just thought maybe you cared more.”

“I wanted you to be safe.”

“I’m not ever going to be safe,” Stiles tips his head to one side, “I’m not ever going to have anything real either. There’s just you, OK Derek? There’s this-“ he gestures between them, his hand bumping Derek’s chest. “This is real, this is why I’m coming with you.”

His hand, long fingered and bare, ready for sleep, traces over Derek’s chest.

Derek fights to keep himself in check, the whisper of touch through his shirt is the most he’s had in a while, discounting the split second kiss earlier. He wants, but it’s the kind of want that’ll convince you to stick your hand in a fire, like the whisper that’ll take you over a cliff.

Stiles taps his chest with one finger, then takes his hand away and rests his head on Derek’s shoulder.

“I’m tired of being here. So let’s just go.”

Unbidden, Derek finds his arms around Stiles, pulling him close so that only their layers of clothes keep them separate. Like this they could almost be normal, Stiles clutches at his back, nose buried in his shoulder as he breathes in, in, in, like he’s trying to memorize Derek’s scent – and that does things to him, to the dark, feral parts of him that twist like shadows in his mind.

“What the hell is going on?” comes a voice, and for a moment, Derek opens his mouth and lets his teeth gleam, feels his claws itching to burst free.

But it’s Melissa, her voice cold with shock, looking at the seventeen year old in his arms, her hand still on the light switch by the door.

“Mrs Mcall,” Stiles steps free of him, holds up his hands, “it’s OK, it’s just-”

“I’m calling the police,” she says, already heading for the phone, “Stiles, it’s OK, just sit down honey.”

“Put the phone down, please,” Derek says, trying to keep his voice low and reasonable, even as he thinks of a hundred ways to fight his way out.

“Mrs Mcall,” Stiles begins again, his natural talent for deception apparently failing him,  a spark refusing to become a flame.

She’s dialling, holding the phone to her ear. “Police please,”

There’s a crash, and a cracking sound as the phone is iced over and falls from Melissa’s hand.

Scott is in the doorway, breathless, Kira and Alison behind him.

“We heard yelling,” Alison said, “is everything...?”

“Scott,” Melissa’s mouth moves but produces no sound, she’s looking at the ice on the floor, on the phone, at her son – as if she’s never seen him before.

“Mom, you should sit down,” Scott says.

Kira, twisting her hands says, “I’ll make coffee,” and runs off through the wall to the kitchen. Derke winces as Melissa’s eyes open wider, and she drops onto the couch with a small sound of shock. Dislodged from the blankets on Stiles’ bed, a piece of cable and another spark plug fall onto the carpet.

“So,” Stiles says, finding his tongue, and Derek sees the darker, more truthful Stiles slide away under the brash deceiver, the comic, the fool. “guess we’ve all got some ‘splaining to do.”

 


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So, I kind of have an idea of where I'm going with this now, it's just hard to find time to write updates, what with work, and editing my novel, but I'm trying. Unfortunately for me, my back is shot right now, so all I can do is sit, and type.

“I can’t believe you didn’t tell me,” Melissa says quietly, looking at the blank, dark mirror of the TV screen.

There’s coffee in cups on the table, but no one’s drinking any. Kira and Alison bookend Scott where he’s sitting on the couch, looking at his Mom who’s scrunched into an armchair. Stiles glances up at Derek, leaning against the wall by the door out of the room, casually cutting off Melissa’s only exit.

Stiles himself is pacing behind the couch, occasionally glancing up to find Melissa looking between him and Derek, like that’s the most shocking thing she’s seen all night – a teenager and a grown man almost hugging.

Call the papers, alert the bloggers – mutants invaded my house and all I got was this underage ick factor.

“You’re all mutants?” she asks, “all of you?”

“Yeah,” Scott is trying really hard not to make things worse for her, Stiles can tell, which means he probably doesn’t want to go into what all of them can do.

“So, you freeze things...that thing with the school pool, before you got offered that scholarship, that wasn’t the thermostat malfunctioning. That was you?”

“Yeah. Deaton, he saw me, he’s a psychic, and he offered me the scholarship so I’d have a reason to come to the school. I can control my power a lot better now.” He rubs the back of his neck, “that thing with the phone? I just panicked.”

“And your friend, walks through walls?”

“All kinds of things actually,” Kira is blushing furiously, but holds her head up high, “I’m lucky, my parents are both mutants rights activists – they supported me, when I found out about my power.”

“And you, I know you from the news.”

Alison hugs her arms around her chest. “I’m Senator Argent’s daughter. He was murdered last year, but another mutant. He never knew about my power, and he was the only family I hand. So I’m lucky that Deaton took me in. And, that I have Scott.”

Scott takes her hand in his, squeezing it lightly.

Stiles kind of hates them for that. The easiness of their whole relationship. Why is everything so easy for Scott? His power, his girlfriend, his worldview – all clear and simple and almost normal, despite his mutant DNA.

“That’s...” Melissa lights her hand and covers her mouth for a second, “I’m sorry, I know I should be freaking out this much. You’re, Scott I love you, and I’m happy if this is your, girlfriend, your friends, but...oh God, is this...I mean is this something I gave you or...?”

“Mutant gene comes from the father’s side,” Stiles says, “so, technically you’re not the one who made Scott the way he is.” He wants to say that it’s not something you ‘give’ it’s not a disease, or a condition – only, sometimes, most of the time – that’s exactly how it feels.

“What about the school? What about him?” she points at Derek, “let’s say I understand that you’re a mutant, that your school is some kinds of...hogwarts for teens with powers,”

Stiles snorts, and catches Derek frowning at him. Right, understanding, compassion.

But they don’t have time for this.

“Why are you all here, and why was your teacher-”

“I’m not a teacher,” Derek says.

“You’re at least thirty, that’s what you are,” Melissa says.

“Possibly older,” Derek says.

Stiles hides a smile with his hand and turns to look at the wall as if it holds the meaning of life, or a map to where they’ll find the rest of the students. Derek might try to play the mature adult, but Stiles has know him long enough to see that he’s a little shit sometimes.

“You were making out with a student. A boy the same age as my son,” Melissa might be new to the concept of mutation, but Stiles can see she’s finally starting to catch up. She’s a nurse after all, and an ER nurse at that, according to the ID he saw on her scrubs when she came in. Quick, practical, about time that started to kick in.

“We weren’t making out, we can’t,” Stiles finds himself saying, “look, we’re not at the school because it was attacked, and although right now your son is making some very unsubtle ‘shut up’ gestures-“

Scott stopped slashing at his throat with one hand and just glared.

“- that doesn’t change the fact that you need to know what’s happening before we can leave, and the sooner we leave the sooner we save the rest of the students who have been kidnapped by shadowy commandos, and taken to parts unknown.”

Everyone was looking at him.

Stiles took a breath and continued, gamely, “Your son’s a mutant, we’re all mutants, mutants just attacked the president, the world hates us, most of the school’s been kidnapped and we need to find Deaton, Jackson and Lydia and then rescue our friends before they get vivisected into tiny little pieces of chum...Also, Derek has claws and the ability to heal, so he might well be a hundred years old, but that doesn’t matter because the touch of my naked flesh kills people, so it’s not like he can get into my pants, which, incidentally, I would be more than fine with – now I wanted that out in the open because I can see it coming as a shock later and I always think it’s best to get your shocks all at once. Like a one-stop-shock.”

“Stiles,” Derek says.

“What? I was helping – you weren’t helping, you were glaring.”

Melissa does look like she’s about to check herself into a mental hospital, but he’s sure that will pass.

“Mom?” Scott says, “I know this is a lot.”

“A hell of a lot,” Stiles puts in.

“But, I need you to understand that I didn’t want to lie to you. I was just trying to keep you safe, and to keep the school a secret. But, we have to leave, now. I just need to know that you’re going to be OK. That after this is all over, I can come back and we can talk.”

“After what’s over? Fighting...commandos?” Melissa says shakily, “Scott, I’m not going to change the locks on you, or call the cops, or your Dad...but we won’t be talking about this when you get back, because I’m coming with you.”

Derek looks like he wants to kill someone.

Stiles raises his eyebrows at him, hoping to convey that, if Derek hadn’t been such a lummox and had just got in the damn car when he told him to, they could have avoided this whole mess.

“Mom, you can’t come with us, it’s too dangerous.”

“But you seventeen year olds’ll be fine,” she says, “Scott,  you broke both your arms in a bouncy house - you are not leaving here without me. I don’t care what’s different about your DNA, but at some point you might need a transfusion or a bone setting, and I’m not going to be the parent sitting at home when they get the news that...” her eyes were shining, wet, and Stiles looked away and tried not to think about his Dad. “That I could have helped you. I’m going.”

Scott looked pleadingly at Stiles, then at Derek.

“We’re going to need a bigger car,” Stiles muttered.

“Bouncy house?” Alison says.

“I was five,” Scott is flushing, but he raises his head to glare at Stiles, “and don’t think I’ve forgotten that you two were trying to sneak off without us, I saw those car keys Derek.”

“We were trying to save your lives,” Stiles says, “and doing it nobly.”

“You don’t think I’ve noticed that you barely talk to me anymore?” Scott says, “you were trying to ditch us because you don’t think I understand what it’s like for you.”

Stiles opened his mouth.

“Don’t lie.”

Stiles closed his mouth.

“Stiles, I get it, I’m with Alison and I’ve got friends like Kira and Danny, but you’re still my best-friend. I still want to hear what’s going on with you, and I know it must suck, I can’t imagine how much – but I’m not scared of you, none of us are. You have a really strong power but, no offence, you’re still a doffus.”

Alison nodded. Kira looked out from under her hair. “It’s true, we’re still your friends Stiles. You’ve just been, keeping away from us.”

Stiles could feel a lump in his throat, and he so didn’t want to have an emotional friend scene in front of Derek – the last thing that would convince him that Stiles was combat ready was a group hug with his fellow teens, but Derek surprised him by leaving the doorway and giving him and none too gentle shove in Scott’s direction.

“Just hug him so we can go.”

Stiles beamed, and gave Scott a firm bro hug, then hugged Alison and Kira as well, before punching Scott on the shoulder. When he turned round, Derek was trying to look somber, but he could tell he was a little relived. Stiles was too, he’d been in kind of a dark place since Derek left, and he was only now starting to realise that part of that was down to him, he was the one who’d shut his friends out. But he hadn’t been able to help it, something had changed for him on Liberty island. Every night since he’d had nightmares, and sometimes they’d followed him into the waking world – terrible flashes of green eyes and a cruel smile and a tank of lurid green liquid, with manacles on the bottom.

Seeing those things but being unable to talk about them because no one would understand the fear he’d felt in that machine of Deucalions, fearing that he would hurt someone, he’d been hiding himself away.

“Pack a bag,” Derek advised Melissa, “we’re leaving in the next five minutes.”

They all jumped when the phone rang. Melissa went to answer it, then stopped, her hand hovering over the receiver.

“What?” Scott said.

“It’s four a.m.” Melissa said, looking at him with a definite touch of fear in her eyes, “who is calling me at four a.m?”

“Answer it,” Derek said.

“Don’t,” Stiles said, almost at the same time as Melissa picked up the phone.

“Hello?”

There was a long silence, and Stiles strained to hear anything of the person on the other end of the line.

Melissa frowned, and held the phone out to him. “It’s for you.”

Stiles exchanged a look with Derek. “Who knows we’re here?” he said quietly.

“If it was the commandos we’d be unconscious already,” Derek said.

“He says his name’s Deucalion,” Melissa said, still holding out the phone, “and he’s outside.”

 

 


	7. Chapter 7

“Stiles?”

Stiles realises he hasn’t moved, either to take the phone, or to sprint for the back door like his brain keeps screaming at him to do. The world is narrowing down around him, and he can’t quite get enough air into his lungs.

He only realises that he’s having a panic attack when he drops on to the couch and finds Derek’s hands on his shoulders.

“Stiles, breathe, alright? He’s not taking you away again.”

There was a tapping at the front door, the kind of knocking that mild mannered neighbours used when dropping off a pie for thanksgiving. Deucalion was outside. Deucalion who’d had him kidnapped, kept in a freezing cell for days, and then strapped him into a machine that had come so close to killing him the Stiles had actually died for over four minutes.

All the lights in the room flickered and Stiles jumped. Deucalion was doing that, was messing with them on purpose.

“Breathe,” Derek said softly.

Stiles reached out and grabbed Derek’s shoulders, grasping him firmly. Derek wouldn’t let Deucalion take him again. Scott wouldn’t, Alison wouldn’t, neither would Kira.

Overhead a light bulb exploded and Melissa yelped, leaping to her feet and tearing open a drawer in the coffee table. Stiles, his heart gradually slowing, heard the pip of buttons being pushed, and then Melissa withdrew a handgun.

“Mom!” Scott’s eyes were round as bottle caps.

“Your Dad left it, as protection.”

“You can’t shoot Deucalion, he’s mutant and he controls matter, including metal.”

Melissa didn’t put the gun down. “He’s not coming into my house.”

Alison was gripping Scott’s hand, hard. Stiles realised that this would be the first time she laid eyes on the man who’d killed her father.

The back door suddenly opened, and all of them watched as Deucalion stepped over the threshold and into the house.

“You were taking too long,” he said, with a wave he sent Melissa’s gun clattering into the wall and down behind her chair. “We only came to talk.”

Behind him was the blonde shape shifter, who Thorne had called Erica when they last spoke on Liberty Island. Stiles could have sworn he’d heard Derek say he’d killed her.

“Erica was kind enough to break me out of that ludicrous prison cell, thank you, by the way, for doing such a poor job of dispatching her,” his eyes lighted on Stiles, “good to see you again.”

Stiles grits his teeth, itching to pull his gloves off and show Deucalion that he’s not the same kid he was back then.

“Say what you came here to say, then get out,” Melissa says.

Deucalion smiles softly, but his eyes remain cold. “Hiding behind humans now, Deaton would be so proud,” he sits down, Erica stands at his side, one hand on the back of his chair. “Deaton has been taken by the same people that raided your school. Whoever was with him, I imagine they have them too.”

“How do you know that?” Derek asks.

“Because I maybe have given them the information they needed to trap him, and gain access to the school. As well as some other pieces of intel that have yet to make themselves apparent.”

“You sold us out,” Stiles feels cold rage spread through him, almost as if he’s once again filling himself with Derek’s power. “For what? Extra helpings of jailhouse hash?”

Deucalion leant forwards, elbows on his knees. He looked older, more tired than he had before.

“They, by which I mean our mutual friend Gerard, used some fairly unpleasant means of gaining my cooperation.”

“Torture?” The thought doesn’t appal Stiles as much as it should. After all, Deucalion had tried to kill him and hundreds of others.

“A serum, applied to my central nervous system. Amongst other things it makes mutants compliant, and affects our memories.”

“What about Gerard? What does he want?” Derek says.

“I have no idea, but whatever it is, he needs Deaton to get it. And whatever his end game is, it’s likely to be decidedly bad for our health.”

There was a long, cold silence, then Scott stepped in front of his Mom and addressed Deucalion directly. “What do you want from us?”

“Your help,” Deucalion says, “and believe me, it pains us to admit it.”

“But, we know where they’re keeping Deaton, and your friends,” Erica says, “and we have the means to get there.”

“You want us to trust you?” Stiles snorts.

“No. I want you to realise that this is your only option, and capitulate quickly,” Deucalion says.

Stiles looks at Derek, who has such a pissed off expression that it actually scares him.

“How are we getting there?” Alison says, finally breaking the silence.

“Alison, you don’t have to-”

“Scott, we need to get to Deaton, soon,” Alison says, fixing Deucalion with a stare that rivals Derek’s in terms of sheer icy loathing. “Once this is over, he can go right back to his prison cell.”

Erica looked about a hairs breadth from leaping at Alison and ripping into her, but Deucalion seemed unflustered.

“Good, glad to see one of you has some sense. We left our transport outside, but, we should probably embark now, before it attracts too much attention.”

It takes Melissa only moments to gather her first aid kit, throw a coat on over her scrubs and retrieve her gun. The rest of them have nothing to pack, and so, once they’ve taken shoes from Scott’s and Melissa’s heap of footwear by the front door, they troop out into the darkened street.

“You have got to be kidding me,” Stiles says, “you stole our freaking jet?”

“It was my jet first,” Deucalion says, “I helped Deaton to design it, like most other things in that school. You’re lucky I thought to go and retrieve it once they’d finished picking over the bulk of Deaton’s toys.”

Stiles wishes he could just grab Deucalion by the throat and drain him to ash and bones, but they need him. That doesn’t mean his has to like having him around though, and it doesn’t mean he feels any better about climbing the ramp into the dark interior of the jet. Last time he’d seen the inside of it he’d been wrapped in a blanket watching Lydia and Jackson struggling to revive Derek.

Those were memories he’d happily forget.

Inside, seated on narrow benches opposite one another, the tension was palpable. Alison was holding hands with Scott, engaged in deep conversation, Kira, who’d never seen Deucalion but had heard stories about what happened on Liberty island, was looking anywhere but at him. Melissa was keeping a white knuckle grip on her first aid bag. Deucalion seemed at ease, but Stiles could see the strain around his eyes and mouth. Whatever Gerard had done had hurt him, badly.

Erica was in the cockpit, flipping switches and putting on a headset.

“What do you know about Gerard?” Derek asked, making Stiles tense up. If there was one thing that screamed ‘bad road’ it was Derek and Gerard being in the same room again. He couldn’t let that happen, Derek was vulnerable to him somehow, and Stiles had to keep that from getting the best of Derek.

“Not much,” Deucalion said, “he has a daughter, had a son. A granddaughter,” his eyes strayed to Alison, and Stiles felt sick. Alison’s whole face had gone rigid.

“Gerard...is related to Senator Argent?” Scott said, slowly, as if not wanting to believe it.             

“He’s his father, and believe me he makes our dearly departed Senator look like a dyed in the wool mutant sympathiser. Gerard was conducting experiments on mutants back before you were born, well,” he looked at Derek, “before most of you were born. He’s always hated us, but, now I think he’s targeting all mutants, rather than a select few. This kind of large scale operation smacks of the end of days. The culmination of his life’s work.”

“My grandfather...” Alison shakes her head, “he’s in the army, he’s a general.”

“He was,” Deucalion says, “he left the military under something of cloud, and then we rather lost track of him, though Deaton tried to keep tabs, naturally.”

Deucalion looked at Derek with mild amusement. “You remember his daughter Kate, don’t you? I can’t imagine you two not meeting, given all the time you spent with Gerard.”

Stiles folded his gloved hand over Derek’s.

Deucalion raised an eyebrow, but said nothing.

The jet shuddered and above them, straps and cargo netting swayed and rattled.

“Where are we going?” Stiles asked.

Deucalion reached into his inside jacket pocket and removed a folded map, which he tossed into Stiles’ lap. “Alkali Lake.”

Derek didn’t move, but Stiles sensed his sudden unease. He chanced a look at Derek’s face and saw that, beneath his fixed expression of watchful dislike, he was surprised. What did he know about Alkali lake? What did it mean? Stiles wanted to ask but knew he couldn’t in front of Deucalion. He squeezed Derek’s hand instead.

Whatever was waiting at Alkali lake, he wasn’t going to let it get a hold on Derek. He would keep him away from Gerard, and Kate, and whoever else tried to take him away. If he could face Deucalion, he could face some bigoted mad-scientist.

Overhead, the lights flickered, and Stiles glared at Deucalion, who frowned at him, curiously.

 


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I'm going away for a few days, but will be updating both my TW fics soon!

The jet lands just as the sun is coming up over the snowy shores of Alkali Lake.

Derek loses his straps and stands up, heading to the cockpit where Erica is peering out over the water.

“I’ve been here before, there’s nothing.”

“Nothing above ground,” Erica says, rolling her eyes, “there’s an underground facility, I did some sneaking around in Gerard’s files before I went to find Deucalion.”

Deucalion lays a hand on the back of her chair and looks out through the cockpit window. “The entrance is there, in the spillway. But you can guarantee that they have cameras and guards.”

“I’ll go,” Erica says, “they want Derek, they can have him. I can walk right in there and they’ll never know the difference, until it’s too late.”

“Unless by now they know how you got Deucalion free,” Stiles says, appearing at Derek’s side, “which I’m guessing involved your power?”

Erica glares, but is obviously stumped.

“Luckily, your power is my power,” Stiles says, “so, with that in mind, here’s my alternative idea...”

A flash in their midst makes everyone jump, and Derek’s claws shoot free. Once the blue smoke clears he finds that he’s looking at a skinny teenager wearing jeans and a tshirt, with a large scarf wrapped around his neck. He is also blue, and slightly furry, from head to toe.

“What the-” Scott says, from just behind him.

“Isaac. No time to explain,” the guy says, “they’ll notice I’m gone, Lydia and Jackson and all the others are in the lower level, locked up. Above us is some kind of lab, and over that Gerard’s building something, I can’t get in there, it’s shielded somehow, but I think it’s nearly finished. Deaton, he says it’s a Beacon? He said you’d know what that means, I have to go.”

He vanishes in another puff of blue smoke.

Stiles coughs, waving it away. “What the hell? A beacon?”

“Stiles!” Derek grabs his arm, lifts his hand, claws have split through his gloves, the same claws he gets when he takes Derek’s powers.

“What? Did I touch you?” Stiles’ face is panicked, a worried frown creasing his eyebrows. “Are you OK?”

His blood is running from the split skin of his hands and he’s asking if Derek is OK. Derek isn’t surprised.

“No, you didn’t.” Derek remembers the lights flickering at Scott’s house, and again on the jet. “Was that you – making the lights do that before?”

“No it was him – being an asshole,” Stiles says, gesturing at Deucalion with his claws.

“It wasn’t me,” Deucalion said, “but it was my power.”

“I didn’t touch you either,” Stiles said, “what’s happening?”

“Probably stress,” Kira says, “when I get freaked out I start phasing randomly, I fall through chairs and stuff. Scott used to freeze stuff when he got scared...maybe when you’re stressed or scared all the powers you’ve take start...coming back.”

“Great,” Stiles looks at the claws and slowly, inch by inch, they slide back into his hands, “mother of fuck that hurts.”

“You alright?” Derek asks.

“Fine. Not exactly the first time.”

“You had a plan?” Erica says, unmoved by Stiles’ freak-out.

“Yes, right – here’s what we’ll do.”

*

Derek doesn’t like the plan, but there’s pretty much nothing he can do about it.

Erica, wearing her own face, for once, accompanies Deucalion to the spillway, with Derek or, what looks like him. It’s so weird smelling Stiles but seeing himself. Stiles looked distinctly nauseous after the transformation, but he’d gone with Deucalion readily enough, if it weren’t for the smell of fear rolling off him, Derek would have been convinced that Stiles knew what he was doing.

The idea was that Deucalion, being such a greasy double-crossing dick weasel (according to Stiles and accepted as truth by everyone apart from Deucalion and Erica) had managed to capture Derek and was now going to trade him with Gerard in exchange for...well, Deucalion was going to have to make up something  - money, the chance to kick Jackson in the balls for capturing him – whatever.

Derek had never heard a worse plan in his entire life. But it was all they had.

The doors of the spillway opened, and five heavily armed commandos appeared, flanking Deucalion, Erica and Stiles and holding their guns up, ready to shoot.

Derek could taste metal at the back of his throat. He was watching with Kira, Alison and Scott from the treeline.

Gerard appeared in the entrance of the spillway, he didn’t look happy. He spoke to Deucalion angrily, but after a few seconds three commandos surrounded Stiles and started steering him up the spillway. Deucalion was gesturing, and Derek could feel the tension between him and Gerard from where he crouched.

It happened so quickly that Derek almost missed it. One moment Deucalion was preparing to jump Gerard and his men, the next he’d been tazed in the neck, as had Erica. Their bodies hit the snow, and two of the men started dragging them up the spillway.

“Fuck,” Derek whispered, as the spillway doors slid closed.

“What now?” Scott asked, “do we try and get in?”

“Now we wait. Stiles is the only hope we’ve got of that door opening.”

“What if they’ve knocked him out?” Alison said, “what if they taze him and he changes back?”

“Then they’ll kill him,” Derek said, feeling his body turn cold. “Or use him.”

They crouched in tense silence, watching the doors. The cold seeped into his very bones, and every second that the doors remained closed, Derek felt his body tense further in anxious expectation. No one dared say a word.

Then, slowly, the spillway doors began to open.

Derek stuck his head up and watched them part, the snow falling inwards into the dark hole. The communicator in his ear chirped to life.

“Get in here, now. They’re trying to solder open the door to this room and your friend Gerard? Not happy.”

“You’re OK?” Derek said, already leaping out of the tree line and running for the door, the others following him.

“I’m always OK. Just get here fast.”

“Working on it.”

There are only three commandos guarding the entrance to the spillway, and Derek kills them all within seconds of each other. They barely have time to let off a single explosive burst of gun fire. He distributes their guns to Alison, Scott and Kira, stationing them around the spillway door to guard their exit. They’re still only kids, he can’t take them in with him until he knows it’s safe.

“Citizens of the creepy, underground lab,” says the PA system, unmistakably Stiles’ voice ratting through old speakers, “have you never heard of firewalls? Seriously? You let some kid walk right into your base of operations and start dicking with the settings? I’ve already changed your background to fish in an aquarium. Good luck switching that back.”

All the lights suddenly go off.

“Oh hey, that’s what that button does, but you guys have night vision, right?” The lights start to strobe. Derek now has a slight advantage, it would be impossible to use night vision now, but he can see as well in the dark flashes as he can in the light.

“Couple of glow sticks and we’ve got ourselves a rave.”

Derek lets the words wash over him without taking them in. They mean Stiles is alive, and more importantly, that he’s creating a distraction. Derek prowls through the room just off of the spillway, which is mostly full of boxes and crates. The next set of doors are automatic, but require a password. As he approaches them however, the green screen that had been flashing ‘I.D?’ changes to ‘come on in handsome’.

He decides it’s best not to roll his eyes in a combat situation.

He stops dead, the fond twist to his lips freezing as he sees the tank ahead of him. The tank full of green liquid, with the wires and machines around it. The room smells the same as it did last time he was here, and the smell gets all the way into his brain, unlocking a frenetic sense memory of anger and fear and rage, such blind animal rage that it blotted out everything else.

It’s not just the smell of the room. It’s the smell of _her_.

“Hey Derek,” she’s leaning against the wall, the flashing lights flickering over the thick scars of claw marks on her throat. “Did you miss me?”

 

 

 


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some confusion at the end of the last chapter - no, mystery woman (not really a mystery) isn't Braeden. I just liked the idea of giving Kate some claw marks - no one cages Derek Hale and gets away with it.

Stiles is watching the camera screens like a hawk. It’s the lab he’s been having nightmares about since Liberty Island, he’s sure of it. How has he been seeing it, when he’s never been here, whne only Derek has ever been in it?

Derek’s just standing there, watching the woman across the room as she paces towards him. She’s tall, blonde, looks older than Derek, but then again that doesn’t really mean anything.

She also has a gun.

“Do something, come on, do something,” Stiles mutters, hands frozen on the keys in front of him. “Derek come on.”

He realises that he can get audio feed when a small sound level appears in the corner of the screen. He flips some switches and the speakers come to life.

“So, Derek – what’s it like being back here? Lots of old memories flooding in?”

Derek doesn’t say anything, just keeps his eyes on her, and Stiles can feel his own heart rate climbing. Why isn’t he moving?

“I could never believe that you’d just, lost, all that time,” she says, or rather, purrs as she gets closer, now only a foot away, “all that time we spent together? The months we shared a bed...you felt something for me, I know that. It was cute, seeing you fall for me.”

“Oh, you bitch,” Stiles says under his breath. He looks around at the control panel. There has to be something, lazers? Sentry turrets? Poison gas? Video games have steered him very wrong. Behind him the sounds of welding and pounding have grown fiercer, they must be getting through the door – and they’ll probably kill him when they do.

But it’s Derek he’s afraid for, he remembers enough of those nightmares to know that whatever this place is, Derek won’t survive it again.

The blonde is touching Derek’s face, and Stiles has the sudden urge to break her hand off. His knuckles prickle as a good inch of claw slides free. He has to get down there, but there’s only the door and there are commandos out there...

Everything around him melts, jumps and twists away from him like smoke, and then he’s stumbling on the lab floor, catching the side of the green filled tank to balance himself. When he looks up, the blonde and Derek are both starting at him.

“Get, your hand, off of him,” Stiles says, pointing at her.

She looks amused. “A teleporter? We already have one of those, not exactly going to help you in a fight, is it?”

“We’ll see,” Stiles says, feeling none too confident and still shaking, “Derek, we need to get out of here, to the kids, remember?”

Derek nods, starts moving towards him as if still in a trance. The woman stops him with a hand on his chest.

“Not so fast,” she smiles at Stiles, and he feels his gut turn icy, it’s like watching a snake imitate a human. “Sweetie, why don’t you come over here?”

Against his will, Stiles starts to move, and it’s only then that he realises she must be a mutant. A mutant working with Gerard.  She beckons him closer, and he only stops short when he’s right in front of her.

“You must be the kid, from the island. Deucalion told us all about you. He was very descriptive, not entirely complimentary.”

“I get that a lot,” he’s struggling to fight the iron will that holds him completely still.

“But he said your power was more in the life-taking, than teleportation,” she muses, “so, I guess our guy must have gotten to you somehow. Not a problem. More of you for the fire.”

“More of _us_ , you mean.”

She smiles again. “I’m nothing like you.”

“Bullshit,” Stiles says, “you’re controlling my mind, and Derek’s – probably ringleading this whole thing. And why? Because you’re some jealous ex? And, let’s face it, a cougar.”

“He was with me long before you, kid.”

“And let me guess, you betrayed him?” Stiles’ mouth is running away without his permission, “you have a kind of ‘I eat men for breakfast’ look, like a conniving bitch. Just around the general, face area.”

“Derek, are you going to let him talk to me like that?” She touches Derek’s shoulder sweetly, “I think you should deal with him, we’ve got a minute to spare.”

Derek’s claws shoot out, and he looks at Stiles, his face a mask of cold, murderous intent. Apart from his eyes, which are as trapped and helpless as Stiles’ feels.

“It’s no fun if you can’t fight back,” she says, and Stiles feels himself freed of the bonds that held him, “run kid, and make it good. I want him to remember this.”

Stiles has a quarter of a second to feel his insides curdle with fear, before Derek leaps at him. Stiles dodges and leaps to the other side of the tank, trying to summon the power of teleportation – which is not forthcoming. He snatches up a bone saw.

“Derek, stop,” he backs away as Derek jumps onto the metal slatted platform over the tank, snarling like a feral dog.

“Come on sweetie, at least try,” the woman calls to him, “one swipe and you’ll be all ripped up, like pink paper.”

Stiles wants to snap back something witty, but he’s a little distracted by Derek suddenly leaping at him. He squeezes his eyes shut and sucks in a breath, but, when the assault doesn’t come, he turns and finds Derek crouching on the floor behind him.

He phased.

Just like Kira, he’d made himself intangible.

Derek grabs his ankle and yanks him to the floor, where Stiles’ head smacks the concrete and his vision swims.

“Your choice,” the woman says, “come on Derek, cut him fast, and it’s all over, no more pain. Cut slow and...who knows? Maybe there’s a rescue coming.”

Stiles gets one looks at Derek’s maddened, desperate eyes before his knuckles bite into his cheek, sending his head rocking on the concrete.

“Derek,” it comes out a little slurred, he’s bitten his tongue, tastes blood.

Derek hits him again, bare hands barely pausing, not stopping long enough to have the life pulled from him by Stiles’ skin.

Claws slice through his hip, piercing the flesh, and Stiles yells in pain. His vision turns black at the edges, then pulses red. He’s going to die. Oh shit, he’s really going to die and Derek – Derek’s never going to let it go.

“It’s...it’s OK,” Stiles manages, choking on his own blood, one hand clasping Derek’s shirt even as he pulls back and sinks the claws in again. “Derek, it’s OK.”

Derek pulls back a little, then leans forwards unsteadily, like a wooden puppet strung by a drunk. There’s a deadness behind his eyes that can only be acceptance, and Stiles has a moment to hear, clear as day, Derek’s voice in his head.

_It will be_

Then his bare hand is around Stiles’ throat, and Stiles barely has time to try and roll away before it’s too late. His bleeding, battered body sucks down Derek’s life like the desert drinking in the rain. It’s so much faster than he’s ever done it before, like someone hit the fast-forward on his body and he’s running on nitro instead of air.

Derek hits the ground, and Stiles sits up in time to hear the cry of rage from the woman across the room.

Kate. He knows her name now. Kate. Something from Derek has passed into him, that last moment, like a flash of his mind captured and sent along with his energy. And in that flash Stiles sees Kate, younger and smiling, teasing Derek as they lie in bed, in some cabin a lifetime away.

Smile Derek – you should smile more.

And the way she looked lying on the ground bloody – pretending, faking her death like she did everything else. Manipulating Derek to get him right here, in this nightmare factory.

“Kate!” Stiles shouts, still tasting blood on his teeth, “how did it feel? Knowing he wouldn’t have looked at you twice without your power?”

She points her gun. “You’re going to regret that.”

Her finger tightens on the trigger.

Stiles raises a hand, and an arc of white lightning slams into her body, throwing her into the wall opposite.

Pulling in harsh rasps of breath, Stiles shifts closer to Derek’s body, feeling for his heart through his shirt. Still beating.

“Derek, come on wake up,” Stiles looks at his own hand, which is still smoking steadily, “don’t make me figure this out alone.”

The hand on Derek’s chest suddenly feels hot, a prickling on his palm that feels sort of like how he feels when he touches someone’s skin – before the pull starts. Only this is hot, not cold. He shifts his palm to Derek’s forearm, squeezes and gasps as he feels life start to flow out of him.

Derek’s eyes roll, and after a second he gets his pupils to stay steady, and looks up at him. Stiles snatches his hand back and looks down at him.

“I guess I found reverse,” he says, softly.

“You’re OK,” Derek says, pulling himself up and grabbing Stiles’ shoulder to stay upright.

“Yeah, I’m fine. Are you...”

“Give me a minute,” Derek shakes his head as if trying to rid himself of cartoon bluebirds, “what’s that smell?”

“Uh...” Stiles glances towards Kate’s crispy-fried body, “your ex?”

Derek looks at her with a furrowed brown and wide eyes. “Did you...”

“I have Alison’s power, I think. And Kira’s, and yours,” he lifts his hands, “whatever my power is, it’s getting stronger – I’m not touching people and I’m still taking their powers. Like a mutant sponge. And I do not want that to be my code name.”

“We need to get you out of here,” Derek says, “Kira said it was stress. If it is, it’s only going to get worse.”

“Well, yeah. No one ever went on a relaxing mini-vacation to an underground genocidal lab.”

A door clangs open at the end of the room and both of them start. Stiles gets to his feet and helps Derek up by his arm.

Scott and Kira are holding the doors open, letting Ethan and Aiden, Danny and all the others into the lab. They’re dirty and pale, but not obviously hurt. Stiles recognises their blue, scarf wearing friend, as well as Erica, Deucalion and Thorne, from Liberty Island. Jackson and Lydia are there too, looking far older than when he’d last seen them, their faces pinched with prolonged worry, hardened with a desire for vengeance.

Alison brings up the rear, carrying an assault rifle.

“Are you two done wasting time?” she says, taking in the sight of both of them, standing close together by the tank of green fluid.

“Yes Ma’am,” Stiles says, saluting, “did you find the professor?”

“He’s in that thing they’re building,” the blue dude pipes up, “the beacon? I’ve looked everywhere and I can’t find him – so that’s where he has to be, with Gerard,” he sniffs and wrinkles his nose up, “what’s that smell?”

Stiles exchanges a look with Derek.

“Smores. Let’s go,” Stiles says, taking a purposeful stride towards the door Kate had entered through. Bad guy territory, dead ahead.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Last one!
> 
> Of course, there was that third film...

Derek keeps half an eye on Stiles as they move through the facility, a gang, a mob, a pack of mutants. It feels good, being a part of such a strong group. It feels safer.

They come across small groups of armed commandos, but it’s easy to disarm them. They have Lydia’s scream, Danny’s strength and agility, the twins in their merged form, stronger than Derek. 

And Stiles. They have Stiles.

Maybe it’s because Derek has spent such a long time watching him, but, he can see the changes that have come over the teen since they entered the facility. He’s paler, an eerie focus about his face and movements, dark circles under his eyes as if he hasn’t ever slept , like something is pulling all his energy inwards– and an alertness in them that says he doesn’t need to sleep. He is wired, clearly and completely. There’s power in him, more than he knows what to do with.

Derek’s afraid for him, and maybe of him, just a little, for the first time.

But Kate is dead, and the freedom of that, the feeling of the leash he didn’t even know was on him going slack...he owes Stiles for that. Owes him for doing what he couldn’t.

“It’s there,” Isaac said, pointing to the large door at the end of the corridor. “That’s where I can’t get to.”

“There’s a retinal scan,” Lydia points out, “like the one at the manor.”

Scott turns to Stiles, “We don’t have Erica, can you still...?”

“One way to find out.” Stiles walks towards the glowing consol and Derek watches him go, a tick of worry in his chest.

“What?” Lydia says, looking at him. He will never get used to psychics.

“He’s just...there’s something wrong.”

Lydia’s eyes follow Stiles, then she draws a little closer to Derek. “I can’t hear him.”

Derek frowns, then he gets it. She can’t hear Stiles’ thoughts.

“What does that mean?”

“I don’t know,” she looks worried, deep in her eyes, and afraid, “but I’ve never felt anything like it before. Even the professor has some thoughts that I can see, you can’t keep everything hidden.”

Stiles is standing by the consol, and suddenly his form shifts, until it’s Kate standing there, alive and whole, and she leans forwards and scans her eye. The door opens, and within moments she’s through, and just as Derek shakes off the disturbing sensation of seeing her ghost crawl all over the skin of the person he...just as it’s fading, the door closes, and all of them are left on the wrong side.

“What?” Scott jerks his head around looking at all of them. “What just happened?”

“He’s in there alone,” Jackson said, “what the hell is he thinking?”

“Nothing,” Lydia says.

Derek turns on them. “Where are Erica and Deucalion?”

“Derek, we have to get him-” Lydia says.

“Erica can get in there, where is she?” Derek demands.

“In there,” Lydia snaps, pointing at the sealed door. “Deucalion and Erica, are in there. Whatever Argent is planning, he wants Deucalion to have a good seat.”

“I can get us in.”

It’s Thorne, from Liberty Island. Derek glares at him. “How? I don’t see flying wooden spears helping against reinforced steel.”

“But the degree in computer sciences might,” Thorne says, holding his gaze. “I can get the door open.”

Danny, the half –beast, half-boy, appears at Thorne’s elbow. “Can I watch?”

“Just hurry,” Derek says.

Thorne and Danny go to the door and start taking the front off of the panel. Derek watches the door, tries to smell or hear anything that might tell him what’s going on inside. But there’s nothing.

“What can you hear?” he asks Lydia.

“Not much, it’s distorted by the beacon,” Lydia says, “I still don’t know why he wanted to build one – I mean, it could help him find mutants, but...” her eyes widen, “Oh God.”

“What?”

“The professor, if he focuses his mind long enough and hard enough on someone, or, a group of someones, the psychic pressure could kill them.” She grabs his arm. “He could wipe out a whole generation of people, a whole race. But he would never, he wouldn’t...”

“Kate,” Derek says, “Kate could make him.”

“Oh,” Lydia’s voice is a whisper. “Oh no.”

**

Stiles is standing on a platform in a huge round room. The walls are covered in plates of rusty metal, and it smell strongly of damp and corroding metal. In front of him is the professor, sitting in his wheelchair, staring off into the shadows. Deucalion and Erica are bound and leaning against the wall, plastic halos encircling their heads, pads pressing their temples. Some kind of dampener, another pathetic attempt at control.

And there is Argent. Gerard Argent with his eyes focused like lasers on him.

Stiles smiles, a slow smile. He feels good, better than he has in years. His power no longer scares him – it is him. He is it. He understands now exactly what he is – powerful. In control.

“Professor,” he says, using the voice he borrowed from Kate, “stop now.”

The charge of energy in the room dissipates, he sees Deaton sag a little in his wheelchair.

“Hey, mind stepping outside?” he says to Gerard.

Gerard’s hand goes to his hip to the gun there, and as he pulls it out Stiles raises a hand. A flick of his fingers the thing falls into its component parts.

“Not really so scary now, are you?” Stiles says, walking towards him, the pieces of the gun sliding out of the way like leaves scattered in a breeze. He can feel everything around him, the weight of its energy and structure, atoms and bonds and he can taste fear in the air. Maybe this a little of how Derek sees the world.

“No gun. No commandos. Just an old man with a couple of dead kids.”

He enjoys the greying of the old man’s complexion as the blood drains from it. He wants to take everything from him, because...because he can.

“You’re monsters, all of you,” Gerard says, “you think she meant anything? She was tool, as soon as she’d done as I wanted I would have killed her.”

Stiles smile grows. “Liar.”

He holds up a hand and ice forms around Gerard’s legs, creeping upwards until he’s encased up to his chest, shuddering and clenching his teeth in pain.

“You know what’s funny? Not weird funny, but actually haha funny?” he turns to the wall and a piece of iron wrenches itself loose, a bar about two feet long. It flies through the air and he catches it easily. “You broke into a school. You kidnapped children, you brought them here...this is where you make the monsters. You did this.”

“You think I made him, made Derek a monster? He was a monster long before I even heard of him.”

The ice creeps higher. Gerard lets out a yell out pain.

“The funny thing is,” Stiles continues, ignoring the interruption, “I was watching TV. I was trying to work out if I could ever hold the hand of the man who saved my life, without killing him. I...he...” he shakes his head, there’s something black and strong pulsing in his brain, and it’s getting harder to think, “If you hadn’t come there, if you hadn’t forced us to come find you – we wouldn’t be about to kill you.”

The door crashes open behind him as the electronics spark out.

“Stiles!”

 _Derek, it’s Derek. Shit, what the hell am I doing?_ He steps back, still holding the bar, looking at Gerard’s half frozen body.

There’s a pulse of black in his head, stronger than the others, and his hand lifts, Gerard screams, and then he’ frozen, completely. Stiles jerks his hand back, stunned. Icy vapour rolls of the platform, lapping at his feet.

Derek’s hand lands on his shoulder. He knows it’s Derek without looking. He know what Derek is thinking.

_We have to go now can’t believe I brought him here if anything happened I’d we have to go._

And there’s a voice that isn’t Derek, that Stiles knows, with unnerving certainty  is his own, coming from inside him.

_We could kill of them you know._

He drops the bar with a loud clang. Gerard’s frozen corpse is staring at him. What has he done?

What might he do?

There’s a rumble overhead, and the shifting and groaning of many parts, metal and stone. He turns and looks at Derek, and Derek’s fear might be buried in his eyes, but there’s nothing Stiles can’t see now. Derek is afraid of him, for him, for everyone in the room.

“It’s the dam,” he says, “Gerard’s men must have done something to the monitoring station, the dam’s breaking.”

Derek doesn’t ask him how he knows.

Lydia and Jackson are already running for the professor, Thorne and Danny have the dampeners off of Deucalion and Erica in seconds. There’s a splitting pain in his head now, and the blackness is swelling with each beat of his heart, a laugh like some twisted version of his own echoing in his ears.

There’s too many powers, it’s too much.

_Or not enough._

He can’t take this.

_You’re not even trying._

He needs to get them out, get them out. Get them away. It’s not just the dam, his head feels like a nuke about to scorch the world around him. He pushes Derek away, the others are already running from the door, back into the facility, towards the spillway. Derek looks at him for a second, hurt, scared, but then he grabs Stiles’ hand and starts running, pulling him after.

Stiles doesn’t even get tired, just keeps running beside Derek through the dark tunnels, where warning lights flash and gauges spin into the red zone. The kids clatter ahead, Kira bolting through people to get to doors first and hold them open for the smaller kids. Thorne, the twins and Danny are carrying the really tiny ones, and Alison is helping Erica along, her leg wounded somehow, making her limp.

There’s no sign of Deucalion.

They crash into the main chamber, but the entrance to the spillway is closed, the huge steel doors locked down tight. Stiles barely pauses, just reaches out with his power – with Deucalion’s power, and heaves the doors along on their greased tracks, the huge caterpillar tracks and cogs like a child’s toy.

He tastes blood, stumbles. His nose is bleeding. As the rest of the children pile through the door into the spillway Derek reaches out a hand, tucked into his sleeve, he wipes the side of Stiles’ head, shows him the blood from his ears wordlessly.

“I’m fine,” it comes out in a spray of tiny blood droplets.

“This is killing you.”

Stiles laughs.

Derek frowns, pulls him along. “That’s not funny.”

“I can’t die,” Stiles can’t stop the laughter bubbling up. His side hearts, his vision is swimming.

They stagger into the spillway and the others are far ahead of them when they hear the crash of metal and concrete giving way, followed by a thunderclap of water smashing into the chamber just behind them.

Stiles grips Derek tightly, and in a blink they’re outside with the others, crashing onto the white, snowy ground.

He can’t even feel the cold.  The snow might as well be powdered sugar.

“They jet!” Alison shouts, “we’re not going to make it.”

“What’s wrong with him?” he hears Lydia ask, voice sharp with panic.

“He’s absorbed everyone’s power, it’s hurting him.” Derek sounds so worried, so lost and desperate. Stiles wants to touch him and tell him it’ll be alright, but he can’t move his arm. Can’t get out of the snow.

Derek bends down starts trying to lift him. Scott is at his side, grabbing his arm, rubbing it though his clothes. Overhead there’s a rushing, then blackness replaces the clean grey sky, and the jet crash-lands in the snow just ahead of them.

“Mom?” Scott says, incredulous.

Stiles feels Derek heft him up, carrying him towards the jet.

“Damaged,” he says, the words muffled against Derek’s shoulder, “it’s damaged. The jet.”

Derek doesn’t say a word, just keeps going until they’re on the ramp up into the cargo bay. It closes behind them, but he doesn’t put him down, and Stiles wishes he could feel anything, because having Derek this close is something he wants to remember.

Because the jet is damaged.

It’s not going to fly, unless he makes it.

And that means he has to leave.

The moment Derek sets him down on a stretcher, Stiles looks up at him.

“Thank you,” he manages, his voice drying out like a creek under a sandstorm. “Derek, you...take care of my Dad.”

“Don’t you-” Derek starts, his face full of realisation and panic as he reaches for him.

Too late.

Stiles hits the snow outside for a second time, on his belly, looking up at the lifeless jet. This is good. Out here, in the cold whiteness the dark inside his head is less of a weight. He can breathe. His clothes smell like Derek – his borrowed powers tell him that. Derek’s power. He lifts a hand as he hears the water crash into the open behind him. The jet lifts into the air, and in his mind he can see switches flicking, dials turning. He is flying a jet.

As it rises, as the water comes crashing down around him, sweeping him off of the snow and into a bone shattering turmoil of trees and sheet metal and foaming, freezing water, he doesn’t feel scared.

For the first time since he discovered his power – he isn’t afraid.

 

 


End file.
